Little Treasures

I look for the name, wanting to discover more of you, now that there is the silence. I look up old books, to see if you've left it there, scribbled in pencil. I hunt amongst old bags and leather pouches, perhaps a photograph will fall through. I reopen drawers of that big antique almirah, sneak peeks in the mirrors, hoping for a lost reflection. I yearn for the scent of your skin, between faded cotton tees, and lingerie that I've left unwashed since you left. I drive by our friends' houses, wondering if I can get a glimpse of you. I look up old letters, reading them all over again, in search of something that I missed the last time around, something that opens the smallest of windows back into you, now that all doors have been irrevocably shut. The search is arduous, and very very painful. But sometimes, I am rewarded with a line that evokes beautiful memories that I thought were long forgotten. Forgotten along the path where I discovered you, when I explored the you and me. Once in a while, I am rewarded with a story or a verse that you wrote to me, hidden between countless words of mundane conversation. Or an epithet that you used for me, for us. Sometimes, I chance upon stains on the pillow cushions, where you left your tears. And I relive. Recreate those dreams that once fired us up. The house in Manhattan, overlooking the bay, through enormous glass walls, or the coffee, at a street cafe on the Champs Elysees or the lights across the Bosphorus. Or the dream of making love in the open, on a secluded beach, the passion of the moon taking us over. Those dreams are fading a little by little, I know, overtaken by a few others. But I keep them with me, in a corner not so far, to revisit, when I cant stay afar. They are mine.